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A review by pugloaf
Evolution's Darling by Scott Westerfeld
3.0
Reading this book I felt I wasn't suppose to come away liking any characters. From the opening prologue and initial chapters there was a strange neutrality to characters and situations: I didn't feel like I particularly liked any of them and that that was by design. Potential potent ethical questions are approached and dealt with with the pragmatism of someone having to make a decision and it left me surprised but also intrigued by this approach. After the prologue I had no characters I particularly liked/rooted for, during the book I slowly grew to like Darling and Mira, and then by the end I was back to not particularly liking anyone again. The book is at its best when the characters navigate a future world where the ethical or future hypotheticals we would simply ponder actually have to be acted on, and we are observers with no preferred side.
While this is interesting enough to pull me in and like the book the peculiar veil the book lives under gets disrupted towards the end for me, when we are meant to choose sides. We are meant to see the state that Mira is left in, her peculiarities that disturb Darling and the reveal of her forced amnesia, as the worse state to be in than the state Vaddum is left in- partially lobotomized with no ability to remember things against his will. The way the ending is portrayed as a good state to be in for Vaddum and Darling is strange to me because the treatment of Vaddum seems pretty bad. I could chalk this up to neutrality- I'm not suppose to like the decision and it again reinforces that their are no 'good' characters- but the tone its presented in makes it seem like I'm suppose to think it good. While the door is open at the end for unreliable narrator being called out with Memory and the looping story it still seems like the intention is for the end to represent a good end even though to me that is not the case.
While this is interesting enough to pull me in and like the book the peculiar veil the book lives under gets disrupted towards the end for me, when we are meant to choose sides. We are meant to see the state that Mira is left in, her peculiarities that disturb Darling and the reveal of her forced amnesia, as the worse state to be in than the state Vaddum is left in- partially lobotomized with no ability to remember things against his will. The way the ending is portrayed as a good state to be in for Vaddum and Darling is strange to me because the treatment of Vaddum seems pretty bad. I could chalk this up to neutrality- I'm not suppose to like the decision and it again reinforces that their are no 'good' characters- but the tone its presented in makes it seem like I'm suppose to think it good. While the door is open at the end for unreliable narrator being called out with Memory and the looping story it still seems like the intention is for the end to represent a good end even though to me that is not the case.